Earth is Heavy
The element earth is a heavy element, and therefore, it is a blessing as well as a curse. On one side it is heavy and lazy and when the earth element develops in a person, changes can be difficult, and they are likely to become lazy.
The earth element aspires to sink down; and so it is with people who have a lot of the element in their nature, they aspire to restfulness - not movement.
This is unlike someone with a lot of water element that must flow and someone with a lot of air element which is light and drifts with the wind and someone with a lot of fire who must have nonstop action.
Someone who has a lot of earth in them simply likes rest...
Stability
The good side is that a person with a lot of earth, one that doesn't move that fast from their place, can develop this quality in the direction of stability. Stability is good when it gives us security.
In economics for example, someone who loves action (fire element) may be drawn to invest in risky stocks but, someone with a lot of earth element will invest mostly in real estate. It's steady. It's clear and relatively secure and it has stability.
Even the Bible refers to God in 'earthly' descriptions when speaking symbolically of security. When it is said that in God you can trust, symbols like rocks and fortresses are used.
In The Song of David it is written: The LORD is my rock and my fortress, and my deliverer; The God who is my rock, refuge; my shield, and my horn of salvation, my high tower, and my refuge; my savior, Thou savest me from violence. (Samuel 2 Chapter 22)
What is the big difference between the heaviness that leans towards laziness and the heaviness that leans towards stability?
The lazy never move, even when they need to, and can actually never be trusted. The stable, though slow and not easily moved from their place, if they see it is necessary will move.
Perhaps it can be said that a lazy person has only earth element in their nature, while the stable person has the right combination of other elements as well.
Earth provides a sense of home. The element earth is the place we come from and on earth, it is said in The Bible: we are equal: All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all return to dust (Ecclesiastes Chapter 3, 20).
Gravity
Another thing that especially characterizes the earth element is that earth is the only element that has gravity. It has the power to draw. Everything in space draws other things to it, and the gravitational pull is proportionate to its size. This is not something that should go unnoticed - this is called the power of attraction.
David Abraham, from New Mexico, writes in his amazing 1996 book The Spell of the Sensuous, that it is possible to perceive gravity as love. The earth, Mother Earth, draws us to her, holds us in her lap, and like a mother - she never really lets go…
With this in mind, I like to think that stability (not laziness!) is something that attracts. Stability - whether it is expressed as secure male presence or as deeply nurturing femininity - is a magnetic force that ultimately attracts matter to it.
Being a stable and trust worthy person, someone with earth element, people around you will feel attracted to what you have to offer (provided of course, that it has substance).
Fertility
Here the connection is made between stability and fertility. The earth is so fertile, maybe because everything sits on it. If matter just floated in the air, never resting on the ground, it would be impossible for life to be created. There would not be enough organic material to become fertile.
The stability of earth creates attraction. The attraction causes good materials to be returned to it and build-up, and in this way it has the ability to sprout new life. The presence of spores in earth comes from the ability to attract. That is why for example, the moon has no bio-spores. It doesn't have enough mass to create a gravitational pull that will hold an atmosphere that would allow life to develop on it. Of course, the mass is not enough of a factor to guarantee life, but it is necessary.
And so it is in people as well - in order to have cycles of fertility, creativity and renewal in us, we must cultivate not only the element fire (energy, action, transformation) and water (flow, connection, fertilization) and air (inspiration, freedom, openness) but also the element earth that brings with it the blessing of stability and presence.
The element earth is the most tangible that there is. The most materialistic, the most "is" that exists. And in orthodox Kabalism, it is earth that actually points to the "true is" - the Holy presence; which is ultimately the most stable thing there is, that which is always there, and will never change, that which came before, and will always come after - God.
Experience of what is holy is the only "true is" that exists, and that is actually what is bestowed by earth to the soul - the "is of creation."